Why Worry About the Agriculture of the Middle?

A White Paper for the Agriculture of the Middle Project

During the past several decades, the American food system has increasingly followed two
new structural paths. On one hand, small-scale farm and food enterprises in many
regions have thrived by adapting to successful direct markets which enabled them to sell
their production directly to consumers. This is an encouraging trend with real benefits to
their communities. On the other hand, giant consolidated food and fiber firms have
established supply chains that move bulk commodities around the globe largely to serve
their own business interests.

This new pattern of food systems has had a disastrous effect on independent family
farmers—it has led to a disappearing “agriculture of the middle.” These farms and
enterprises of the middle have traditionally constituted the heart of American agriculture.
They operate in the space between the vertically integrated commodity markets and the
direct markets. While the bulk of these farms have gross annual sales between $100,000
and $250,000, it would be a mistake to characterize them simply as midsized or
small farms. Many of these endangered “agriculture of the middle” farms are what the
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service calls “farming-occupation
farms” and “large family farms.”

What we are calling the “agriculture of the middle” is, in other words, a market-structure
phenomenon. It is not, strictly speaking, a scale phenomenon. Yet, while it is not scale
determined, it is scale related. That is, farms of any size may be part of the market that
falls between the vertically integrated, commodity markets and the direct markets. But
the midsized farms are the most vulnerable in today’s polarized markets, since they are
too small to compete in the highly consolidated commodity markets and too large and
commoditized to sell in the direct markets.

Current funding support provided by United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) through the Multistate project, NC-1198, “Renewing an Agriculture of the Middle: Value Chain Design, Policy Approaches, and Environmental and Social Impacts” (2012 -2017).